FYI: The stock market’s recent correction has been more abrupt than you’d expect if the market were in the early stages of a major decline.
I say that because one of the hallmarks of a major market top is that the bear market than ensues is relatively mild at the beginning, only building up a head of steam over several months. Corrections, in contrast, tend to be far sharper and more precipitous.
Consider the losses incurred by the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the first three months of all bear markets of the last 80 years. (I used the bear-market calendar maintained by Ned Davis Research.) I focused on this three-month window since that is the length of time since the stock market registered its all-time high in late September. As you can see from this chart, its average loss over these three-month periods was “just” 9.0%.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-still-looks-like-just-a-stock-market-correction-not-something-worse-2018-12-26/print
